The Hardest Thing
by purefoysgirl
Summary: After the death of Faramir, Eowyn remarries to a reluctant Legolas on the advice of Aragorn. The relationship is dysfunctional and bitterweet, please be aware that there is violence involved! This story is complete, please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

**Éowyn**

I can feel you when you enter the room, feel the restless energy of you. I watch you move to the window, your back to me—older by hundreds of years than I, but still so very young looking. Such beauty to you, such symmetry, such grace. It was that beauty and grace that drew me to you first, friend of he who will always hold my heart. He who brought us together in hopes of stilling my grief and yours. I watch you at the window, lean body bent, eyes searching the peaks and slopes of the mountains. How alien this land is to you, a forest creature. How cruel he was to send you to me, how you must love him to have come.

"Legolas," I say, just to say your name. It is not love between us, no. You fascinate me with those bright blue eyes, with the stillness of your soul. I look at your hair and mourn it, shorn in a fit of desperation, in longing for the wildness you once knew. It falls on your perfect white skin in haggard locks, still beautiful, still shimmering with a slivery light as you turn to me. There is nothing reflected in those beautiful large eyes but an empty despair. How you hate it here, trapped in the mountains that do not welcome you, trapped in a marriage you did not want with a wife you do not desire and a son who is not your own. Cut off from the natural world you long for until the day that I die and he releases you from your bond. "Please, say something."

I wait for the musical sound of your voice. Elven man, you have no choice in your beauty, in your power to draw others to you—nature fashioned you in such a way, seductive, elusive, a mystery to mere mortal folk.

"There is nothing left to say," you tell me, long black lashes falling to cover your large blue eyes, flicking back open as your face closes me out—a flawless statue, untouched and untouchable.

I go to you even though I shouldn't, drawn like a moth to flame. Dead Faramir was love I once knew, gentle and kind, a thoughtful husband and a generous provider. Aragorn was the desperation of youth, the fancy of a girl who had never known men. But you, _you_ are the slender blade of temptation, deadly and sharp, slipping beneath the ribs to strike a heart unable to keep you out. You are the lost savagery of myself—the angry young woman named "Lady of the Shield-Arm," the woman who slayed the Witch-King and, so, fell into legend and was lost to banality. I never cease longing for it, that excitement, that wildness. It draws me to you again and again, relentless and unrepentant.

I see your eyes spark with flame, glowing bright blue in the pearlescence of your skin. A faint flush brings roses to your high cheeks, colors your perfect lips a darker shade of red. Taller than me, and broad of shoulder despite the leaness, lithe like the slender, tense wood of the bow that hangs useless and unused above the hearth. Your jaw clenches when I lay my hands on those shoulders, feel the muscle shift beneath my palms. A wild animal in my hands, with all that same potential to strike out, the wounded wounding those that would disturb it.

"Legolas," I say again, a soft sigh. Close enough to feel that rabid warmth, the heat of a body much warmer than a human's, radiating like a small sun to pierce my thin shift. I know that I am beautiful, I know that time has not erased all that was once glorious about me—I am no closer to middle-age than you, but time and circumstance has taken its toll, taken the luster from my eyes, taken the brightness from my skin. I was once a match for you, flinching husband, a beauty in my own time laid low by grief. I can see the reluctant desire there in the tightening of your mouth. Denied other outlets, you resent the one I offer, resent my intrusion on your pain, the distraction of flesh that falls below the standard of a people used to perfection. But the wildness remains, dear husband—I hold a savagery inside me that you cannot resist, an unhindered lack of inhibition that your perfect elven maidens never dreamed existed, and you cannot turn away from that. You _need_ it now, don't you? You need something to take the place of nature's fury.

Your slender, fine-boned hands rise to grip my wrists. Such strength in those hands, a corded strength from so many years of mastering a bow. I wince as those fingers tighten, vice-like, leaving marks that will bruise. Bruises to match the others—a risk I run to taste you, a price I willingly pay. You wrench my hands off of you, willing to be touched only on your terms, but you do not push me away. You never push me away, even in the worst of it you never push me away.

"Why do you do this?" you harshly ask me, pained and needing. You know what will happen. You know what you will do the same as I. The fact that I still seek you out disturbs you, beyond your understanding. And such is the chasm between elves and men, that you do not understand how much we are willing to sacrifice for the things we require.

"I cannot help myself," I whisper, losing myself in your eyes, your pupils like pinpricks, leaving them nearly all that vibrant blue. I arch my back, pressing belly to belly, absorbing that heat of yours as you sigh. You hate yourself for wanting me in return. You hate what all this resentment has done to you, what it has made of you. You hate that when the anger wins, you lose your battle with your self-control and do those things that you always regret but cannot deny. Those things that I endlessly forgive, because I need them, too. We are warriors, both. It need not be spoken.

You recoil, wound tense as a bowstring, and strike me hard across the face. My head snaps back, blood wells to the surface as I stumble back, catching my balance against the wall. Through watery eyes I see your fierce look, hawkish and aggressive, so angry at everything life has dropped on your slender, straight shoulders. You come at me with that unnatural speed and I strike out, not trying to stop you, only trying to slow you down. You hit me with that speed, crushing me against the wall, sharp teeth drawing blood on my neck, on my shoulder—biting with an animal's blind fury. Nails rake my shift, tear through to the skin where bruises from the last time still appear bright and telling. I try to catch my breath, and then I give into it, give into your fury, give into the violence that saturates your every movement. I give in and find myself, cowed and shivering, trembling in the face your greater strength, resisting until surrender is no longer an option but something forced upon me. Curled in on myself for that meager protection, I reach out through the force of you and touch your face with bloody fingers, run my fingertips over your set mouth and feel the skin soft as rose petals. That touch is all it ever takes, all that can drain the anger from you and leave you vulerable. Blood rushing through bodies, pumping adrenaline and fear, excitement. Pain, yes, but a meager price to pay when your tongue darts out to taste my blood, when you bend your head to kiss me with the same fury you showed in beating me. Hands that were so hard turn soft, but no more gentle, caressing my skin with bruising force, bringing that same anger in me to the surface. I tear your clothes away, heedless of the damage, watching the welts rise on your skin where my nails scored you. When you come to me it's like a force of nature, the madness of the wild consuming me completely, the appearance of rape with all the resistance and fighting involved, but such _joy_, joy without love attatched. Because you bring me back to a time when fury and anger was all I knew, when love was more rage than anything. You make me feel things in sharp relief, coupling with such a piercing pleasure it feels more like dying, all the sweeter for the pain. I fight you, of course I do, it is the only way to keep you. I offer you the hunt, dear husband, down to the very moment of slaughter when a touch of fingertips is all that keeps you from that fatal strike, all that turns killing rage into sex and violence. It is a violence we both need to feel alive again, each isolated in dreams undone, in needs unspoken, in life unlived.


	2. Chapter 2

**Legolas**

I cannot help myself, and for that I am sorry. I cannot keep the anger at bay whenever I see your face, see the face of a son not mine, see the matching resentment burning in your eyes. I cannot help myself, and for that I am sorry.

I look down at you, flushed and panting, eyes wide with fright and a fierce, deep _need_ that I cannot understand, that I have never seen before in all my long years.

Your blood is on my lips, on my hands, trembling in tiny droplets on my lashes, smeared like gaudy whore's paint across your cheek. The taste is sweet and salty—opposing flavors, compliments. I run my tongue over my lips before I realize it and turn, disgusted with myself for what has occurred between us. What _always_ occurs between us. There is no ferocity I have unleashed upon you that you have not welcomed with open arms. The idea that you would allow me to kill you is terrifying; more terrifying is the knowledge that it would be, perhaps, the kindest thing to do to you, wounded as you are.

I move away from you, my clothing in tatters from your nails, the heat of you following me, the scent of your flesh clinging to me—animal musk such as an elven woman does not have. You lie on the floor amidst the shreds of your shift and your dignity, watching me like a wary doe longing for the hunter's arrow. Your grief is an open wound, clouding the glory that once was, mingling with my own until all I can feel is an impotent rage at all that has transpired. The pleasure I take in you—take _with_ you—is tarnished by the manner in which it is taken. You long for violence the same way I long for the trees of my homeland, knowing instinctively that I cannot control myself where you are concerned. In a different time, in a different place, I might have loved you, Éowyn—welcomed you as a sister through marriage to Aragorn. But never for myself, child that you are to this world. And willfull, cruel in the way that only women can be: the artful offering of a vulnerable throat, the veiled looks and shimmering tears, the need that rides the air like smoke, insiduous and undeniable. It is not love you seek from me, for love you have had in abundance. You want freedom again, the unhindered abandon of youth and, lacking that, you seek the pain of my attention to prove that you are not yet in the grave alongside your rightful love.

And how can I deny you, beautiful, fragile woman betrayed? How can I control the savagery that these years have nurtured inside me, locked away here in your mountain stronghold with your icy beauty and your resentful son? You come to me like a wounded animal, and the animal in me is drawn to take you down in the natural order of things. That I enjoy it, that I take my own pleasure from harming you, grieves me more than I can ever say—yet that grief does not stay my hand when I lift it against you. Your skin is always softest when I graze it with my knuckles, your eyes are always brightest when they fill with tears of pain, your cries are always sweetest when my teeth draw your blood, your body always more welcoming when it is force that claims you instead of gentle persuasion. What ruby would shine more brightly against your pale skin than the round droplets of your royal blood?

You shove yourself up the wall, back braced, hair falling over your shoulders as your chest heaves with quick breath. Your eyes never leave mine, the fire simmering now, burning down to coals that any stray breeze may blow into an inferno. Your pink tongue darts out, questing, testing the cut at the corner of your lip. Your fingers clench into the stone behind you and you toss your head, your hair sticking sweat-slick to your skin. You are unapologetic, unrepentant of the way you maneuvered me into this violence against you. You know you provoke it, prodding at my temper and wounds until I answer your animal behaviour with my own.

Your pale skin is flushed, the force of our shared climax still hot in your nerves, still moving your blood through your fragile body at triple speed. You say my name like a whispered prayer, say it again with all the enticing, sultry purring of a siren. When you hold out your hand to me, I close my eyes and take it, feeling the tiny bones of your fingers folding around my own, your blood slick between us. When you slide into my arms and fit yourself to my chest, bare skin to bare skin, I cannot help but sigh. We are both of us going slowly mad in this prison, mad to do the things we do to each other. I hold you close, showing to you now the gentleness you resent and I can but rarely bestow.

"I do this because I must," I tell you, helpless to resist my impulses, the pull of hurting you; unable to deny the thrill of hurting you and, so, remaking your soul through pain.

"I know," you say, your lips moving against my skin, ticklish and warm. And we are trapped together, bound by my need to hurt you, and your need to be hurt in return.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Hardest Thing**

The days have passed slowly, husband. The King and his beautiful Queen have come, gracing us with their presence. I have only to watch your face to see it transfigured by love. How deeply you have bonded to the man who was once a boy you helped raise, how much you long for the elven Queen who shared youth with you, can understand your nature in ways that I cannot. I stand in the shadows, a shadow myself, removed from it all with my son silent at my side. He has grown, my Elboron—he resembles his father such that it makes my soul ache. His red-haired head reaches my jaw now, and he has crossed into the sullen and troubled silence of adolescence. None of you pay us any mind but for the Queen, whose sensitive nature no doubt touches your own. She leaves the pair of you and comes to us, reaches out to touch Elboron on his smooth and hairless jaw.

"You've grown so, child," she sighs, the light of the stars filling her eyes, the moon glowing within her white skin. "How very like your father you are."

"I want to be like my uncle," he replies, unmoved by her beauty. My son has seen his mother elf-struck, he will not fall prey to the same sickness that infects his mother and makes her a traitor in his young and naïve eyes.

Arwen's eyes flicker with sadness, skip to her husband and then to you, husband. I see you flinch and know that Elboron only says such things to cause strife, another wounded creature in our little menagerie.

"Boromir was a great man," the King says, his eyes placid, his manner calm. Time has mellowed him, but not removed the fire of power that burns within. Gray streaks his hair but a little—his lineage ages him like a wolf, it will come upon him all at once in the end, a lifetime's worth of growing old falling upon a body in the space of a few days time. I have seen it, I know it—Faramir's guard were Rangers, were of the same Eld line, already old when in service to him. I've watched them die over the years, and their sons—older than myself—remain stripling youths.

You say nothing. You look at my son, at Faramir's cat-like eyes narrowed now with malice in a face that echoes my own. You do not begrudge him his sense of betrayal, you are not so petty as to punish a child, though memories of such feelings have been lost in the mist of time for you. You take a deep breath and smile a little, your mouth curving up in a beguiling way that stops my heart.

"You shall be a great man, Elboron," you tell him, moving to stand shoulder to shoulder with Aragorn. The pair of you are a feast for the eyes, opposite sides of one finely minted coin. "You come from a fine line, the House of Stewards has always produced our finest warriors and bravest men."

My son watches you with suspicion dark in his blue eyes. It is not that he dislikes you, only that he dislikes your presence here, resents your displacement of his father's memory.

I dare a glance at Aragorn, aware of his Queen so near me. I nervously lay my hand on my son's shoulder and, for once, he does not begrudge me the contact.

I see Aragorn's eyes hold mine, then drop to the greenish-yellow bruise on my throat. His brows draw, his eyes narrowing in hurt sadness, disbelief. He says something to you, husband, in that flowing and lilting tongue. He says something that makes your head drop, makes his Queen gasp a little and glance sharply at me. Whatever you say in return heightens the sadness in his eyes, prompts Arwen to speak in that melodic, sighing voice of hers as she moves to look you full in the face. She tips your head up, gives you a gentle smile that has all the healing forgiveness of an angel. Your eyes lift, sharpen, focusing on me until I turn my head away and allow my hair to fall over my face. I do not want your understanding, I do not want your gentleness, Legolas—for those things are the sum of _pity_, and that I will _not_ bear.

"Éowyn," Aragorn says, and my sinuses prick a little. How close he is to me still, how dear to me in secret and untold ways. "Why?"

I clutch Elboron's shoulder before I give him a gentle push in the direction of the door.

"Mother," he protests, but I am going with him. There is nothing in this room that requires my presence, requires my thought.

We both exit, and I whisper, "Go riding today, child. Take your father's horse, it is time it gets used to you."

"Yes, mother," he answers, confused but willing to accept any escape.

I hurry away, scaling the steps to the tower top with quick movements. I still enjoy the leanness of muscle, the strength I have kept, the small freedom of running unhindered even if it is within the prison of stone walls. I wait in the tower, sitting in the sill of the window, untouched by the cold, thinking of my brother and missing Rohan's chill and savage beauty.

I sit until the night falls and I hear you come up the stairs. It has taken many years to hear you, husband, light as you are, as softly as you walk, as silently as you move. Yet I know when you are close, can feel the energy coming off of you in waves that bring a chill to my skin.

"What did he ask you?" I demand, gazing out at the night, at the impersonal stars in their velvety sky.

"He asked me if I had left those marks on you," you answer, and I can tell from your voice that you are standing just behind me. "He asked me what I had done."

"And what did you tell him?"

Silence. Finally, you ask in return, "Do you really wish to know?"

I think of Aragorn—now King Elessar—think of him knowing the strangeness we two share. It pains me to think he knows me now, knows how far I have fallen.

I turn and look up at you, at your beautiful face. You gaze at me with those huge blue eyes, your expression placid, unyielding. My perfect statue of a husband. I reach out and grip your slender hand, turning it palm up in my own, just looking at the smooth palm and fingers. Yours are calloused still, despite not having drawn a bow in years. I trace the callouses with my fingertips, then press my cheek to your hand.

"Am I so unworthy, then?" I whisper, to you, to the ghost of my husband, to the gnawing ache in my heart.

Your fingers curl against my skin, folding under my jaw, your thumb tracing the curve of my cheek.

"I have never judged you so, Éowyn, Lady of Ithilien," you softly say. And, strangely, you add, "I am not a human man."

I am confused for a moment, not understanding, and then it comes to me as you intended: you are like all of your race, a reflection of the things around you. What lack I have in your eyes is but an echo of my own dissatisfaction. You mirror me, husband, do you not? You are unable to see me as anything other than what I see in myself.

"I am dead," I whisper, speaking the secret fear aloud, my tears running down to taint your perfect skin, trickling between your fingers. "I have been dead all along."

You smooth my hair with your other hand, moving to sit next to me, facing me.

"I would love you," you whisper to me, wrapping me in your embrace, cradling me like a child. "But you will not allow it."

You speak true, dear husband. Love has betrayed me too many times, always ready to pierce my heart with its razor sharp edge. Pain is preferable to the agony of love. You could love me, yes, but that will not stop me from growing older, from becoming a creature that fails and dies, repulsive to you, a repugnant and decrepit old hag beside your beauty. I will not do that, husband. I will not see you paired with a creature such as myself. I punish my own mortality and deny myself such happiness because, when it is all said and done, in my own convoluted way I _do_ love you, but I cannot allow you to love me in return because I will age and die. I will never leave another as I have been left, I will never leave a hole inside you as the hole that I have inside myself. I care for you too much to allow you to care for me.

And that, I think, is the hardest thing.


End file.
